Chapter 1: What crime led to the manhunt for Claude Dallas Jr.?
Every case on park predators has a twist, but Chameleon takes deception to a whole new level. Hosted by journalist Josh Dean, Chameleon digs into the real stories of people who reinvent themselves through lies, cons, and double lives.
If you're ready to explore the world of scam artists and little white lies that spiral into unforgettable scandals, listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra.
And the case I'm going to share with you today is one of those true stories that has, in a strange way, turned the villain into somewhat of a legend, but for all the wrong reasons. I think it's important to be clear from the outset of this episode that the man at the center of this double murder was, without a doubt, a dangerous individual.
But for some reason, I saw several retellings of this case that indirectly and sometimes directly portrayed the killer as almost a folklore-like hero, which just doesn't feel quite right to me. The murders that he carried out happened in Owyhee County, Idaho, which is located in the southwest corner of the state. The city of Boise isn't too far away, and neither is the Twin Falls area.
A key landmark in this region is the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management website, this landscape has the greatest concentration of nesting birds of prey in all of North America.
The Snake River runs through a deep canyon there and steep cliffs with lots of ridges and overhangs that overlook the water create the perfect home for birds like eagles, falcons, hawks, and owls to make nests and raise their young. It's a protected area, one of many in the state of Idaho that hunters and poachers are supposed to respect.
And the people responsible for enforcing the laws around wildlife are the state's game wardens, also known as conservation officers. Back in the winter of 1981, a trapper with a bad reputation broke the rules. And the events that followed played out like something from an American Western movie plot.
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Chapter 2: How did Jim Stevens become involved in the case?
Except it's not fiction. Every bit of what I'm about to tell you actually happened. This is Park Predators.
so so
On the afternoon of Monday, January 5th, 1981, a man named Jim Stevens was on his way to meet up with a friend of his named Claude Dallas Jr. at Claude's remote animal trapping compound in Owyhee County, Idaho.
Jim knew that his buddy needed some supplies and food to endure the winter before spring arrived, so he hadn't thought twice about making the trek to the remote campsite some three miles north of the Nevada state line and roughly 13 miles east of Idaho's border with Oregon. As Jim approached the compound, he fired a few gunshots into the air to alert his friend that he was almost there.
Prior to this, Claude had asked Jim to fire his gun upon approach so that he wouldn't be surprised when Jim arrived. According to later coverage in an episode of the FBI files and a piece by the Idaho Statesman, Claude was the kind of guy who didn't like to be caught off guard at his trapping compound.
So he'd come up with this gunshot warning system to be able to differentiate between his friends and unwanted strangers. When Jim got to the compound, Claude greeted him and took the supplies he brought. Laying around the site were several bobcat skins that Claude said he planned to sell when spring arrived. Jim wasn't planning on doing any trapping this trip, though.
He was more interested in collecting Native American artifacts from the landscape. So while Claude restocked his compound with the supplies and tended to the bobcat furs, Jim wandered off with his metal detector to search for artifacts along the South Fork of the Owyhee River. A few minutes later, though, he heard what sounded like loud voices coming from the trapping compound.
So he headed back to see what was up. When he arrived, he saw Claude and two other men, 50-year-old William Bill Pogue and 34-year-old Wilson Conley Elms, who I read in the coverage most often went by his middle name, Conley. Both of the men were game wardens. Jim saw that the trio of guys were arguing, and Claude seemed to be growing more and more frustrated by the warden's presence.
Bill and Conley pointed out that it wasn't bobcat or deer hunting season, yet it was clear that Claude had already killed several of those animals. The trapper couldn't come up with a good reason for his alleged poaching activities, and the longer the discussion went on, the more agitated Claude became.
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Chapter 3: What events transpired during the confrontation with game wardens?
And Jim believed him for the time being because considering what had just happened, Jim figured it was in his best interest to comply with his friend. He then helped Claude dispose of the two game wardens' bodies. Together, the men loaded Bill Pogue's body onto a mule and moved it into Jim's truck, which was parked just on the other side of a nearby ridge.
After that, the men brainstormed about what to do with Conley's body. He was a much larger man than Bill, some sources say almost 300 pounds, so trying to move him to the truck via mule was quite difficult. So they decided to drag the game warden's body about a half mile away and dispose of him in the nearby river.
Just prior to that though, Claude had actually suggested they dismember him and scatter his remains, but neither man had the stomach to go through with that. After that, Claude used kerosene to torch all of the areas in and around the compound that were bloody.
Then, the men built two fires where they burned some of the victims' belongings, as well as the ropes they used to move the game warden's bodies. When they left the trapping compound and Jim's truck, Claude remarked that they needed to take Bill's body to one of his friend's houses in Paradise Hill, Nevada, who could help them dispose of it.
Throughout their five or so hour journey to that location, Claude told Jim that he was sorry he'd gotten him involved in the matter, but once again emphasized that what happened between him and the wardens was justified. He claimed Bill and Conley had basically invaded his space and the shootings were merely an act of self-defense.
But in the back of Jim's mind, he kept replaying everything that had happened and he couldn't quite figure out how exactly Claude's version of events was self-defense. But fearful for his own life, he didn't argue with his friend because he didn't want to meet the same end as the game wardens. So Jim just kept playing along.
Around 11 p.m., the pair arrived in Paradise Hill and met up with a couple named George and Liz Nielsen. George and Liz operated a tavern out of their house, and at that time of night, they were just about to close up.
Claude explained to George that he had Bill Pogue's body in the back of Jim's vehicle, but they'd left Conley Elms' remains somewhere in the Owyhee River not far from the trapping compound.
Instead of stopping right then and there and telling Claude to beat it, George, who producers for the FBI files described as having a similar resentment for law enforcement as Claude, agreed to help the men cover up the crimes. George told Claude that they could use his pickup truck to transport Bill's body to a burial site in the Nevadan desert.
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Chapter 4: What actions did Claude Dallas take after the murders?
A special agent with the FBI based in Nevada also joined the case to assist in both the murder investigation and the manhunt for Claude. Authorities were confident that Claude had crossed state lines after fleeing, so that's one of the reasons why federal investigators handled that aspect of the investigation.
Anyway, by midday on Tuesday, law enforcement's two most pressing priorities were finding Claude Dallas Jr. and recovering the bodies of his victims. It took a few hours, but eventually sheriff's deputies and forensic experts from the State Department of Law Enforcement made it out to the section of the county where Claude's trapping compound was located.
When they arrived, no one was around, but there were still animal skins sitting where Claude had left them, which I imagine indicated to police that he had not returned to retrieve them after going on the run. Investigators made note of the pelts and began combing the compound for physical evidence. They especially wanted to find anything that could prove Claude had personally been there.
They didn't want to only rely on Jim Stevens' witness account. They needed evidence that backed up his version of events. Around noon the following day, Wednesday, January 7th, investigators rode in a helicopter above the landscape to try and locate Conley Elms' body. And after flying around for a short while, they spotted him.
His corpse had become lodged under a submerged tree branch in the river, about a quarter of a mile downstream from Claude's trapping compound. He hadn't been weighted down with anything when he'd been put in the water, so it hadn't taken long for his body to surface and get snagged on the branch. Shortly after he was located, investigators began the process of retrieving his body.
Reporting by the Associated Press and Idaho Statesmen stated that once he was removed from the river, his body was kept at the crime scene overnight Wednesday until resources could arrive to take it for an autopsy. But even with the results of that examination pending, officials told the press that it was clear Conley had been shot twice in the head and two times in the chest at point-blank range.
While processing the crime scene, detectives had discovered other things of interest too, including some traces of blood on the ground in various places. Those spots appeared to have been covered by vegetation debris that someone had tried to burn, but not all of the blood had been incinerated. So they took samples of it.
They also collected firearm evidence and snapped photos of several shoe prints on the ground. They discovered spent shell casings for both .357 and .22 caliber ammunition and were able to recover some of the victim's belongings that Claude and Jim had burned in the two fire pits.
The blood samples and other trace evidence were quickly sent to the Idaho State Crime Lab for analysis, but the results weren't immediately available. So in the meantime, investigators asked Jim to walk them through everything he remembered from the day of the murders.
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Chapter 5: How did law enforcement conduct the manhunt for Claude Dallas?
The 34-year-old was married to his wife, Cheryl, and was originally from Oregon, but had moved to Boise, Idaho when he became really interested in working for the Fish and Game Department.
The only reason he and Bill were in the Owyhee Mountains on January 5th was because an area rancher had tipped them off to ongoing incidents of deer and bobcat poaching in the region, and they were investigating the source of those problems. Conley's wife Cheryl told reporter Pete Zimowski that on the day of the crime, Conley had actually been summoned for jury duty, but not called yet.
By that afternoon, he learned that Bill was gonna go investigate the alleged poaching violations by himself, and Conley refused to let his colleague go alone. No other officers were available to accompany Bill at the time, so Conley stepped up. Cheryl said she'd asked her husband not to go, but he made up his mind.
After learning of his death, she expressed she was devastated, but she was also glad to know that Conley had breathed his last while doing his dream job. Cheryl told reporter Pete Zimowski that she planned to cremate Conley's remains along with one of his favorite fly fishing rods, hat, and suspenders that belonged to his father.
She wanted to spread the ashes in the South Fork of the Boise River, which was one of her husband's favorite streams to fish in. Leading up to his death, the couple had been planning to adopt a baby, their first child together.
She told the newspaper that even though she'd tragically lost her life partner, she still planned to move forward with the adoption, which I find not only admirable, but inspiring. Bill Pogue's loved ones, though, couldn't find much closure simply because his body remained unaccounted for.
Without something to lay to rest, there would be no finality to his death, no burial, no answers, until his remains were located and brought home. The terrain that searchers were looking for him in was unforgiving, and at times the weather conditions were brutal.
Temperatures dropped, storms rolled in, and there were numerous gullies and abandoned mine shafts that Claude could have discarded the missing game warden in. Investigators traversed the search grid by foot, by air, and on horseback, but no sign of Bill turned up.
Two days after the murders, the broad stroke circumstances of the crime were all over the news, but authorities remained tight lipped about who the suspect was or who the victims were. All investigators would say was that two game wardens had been killed while investigating reports of illegal trapping.
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Chapter 6: What evidence was found at the crime scene?
A deputy with the Owyhee County Sheriff's Office told the press that Claude Dallas Jr. wasn't your ordinary poacher. He was armed, dangerous, and had expert knowledge of the landscape in which he'd carried out the killings. The 30-year-old was described by many folks as a loner with survivalist skills who didn't like being around people.
He would spend most winters by himself in the desert living off the land, and when the weather got warmer, he took truck driving jobs or worked at farms to make ends meet. One article I read by Steven Anderson and Mark Crane for the Idaho Statesman explained that Claude had lived along the Idaho-Nevada border for about 10 years prior to the murders. So the dude knew it like the back of his hand.
A deputy even went as far as characterizing Claude as a self-professed mountain man who had a lot of experience in the outdoors. George Nielsen's brother told the Idaho statesman in part, quote, Claude's lived the kind of life most of us only wish we could live. He knows the cowboy life. He knows about open country and taking care of himself. He's an educated guy.
How many men do you know who could winter alone out on that desert and survive? End quote. Inside a trailer Claude had in Paradise Hill, authorities found a bunch of books about fashioning gun silencers, combat, ammunition, and survival skills. And they later learned that in October of 1980, a few months before the murders, he'd purchased an AR-15 automatic rifle and a canoe in Sandpoint, Idaho.
The gun was accounted for at his trailer, but the canoe was not. And it also wasn't among his belongings at his trapping compound, which prompted officials to suspect that he'd probably hidden it somewhere and was likely using it to evade capture and stay off the land where he could be more easily tracked.
UPI News unearthed an old issue of National Geographic Society's magazine, The American Cowboy in Life and Legend, which featured two-color photos of a much younger Claude living his best cowboy life at a ranch in Paradise Valley, which I think only further cemented the image of him being a well-equipped person who could survive in the harsh landscape.
So in light of all that information, investigators strongly suspected Claude would be very difficult to find in Idaho and Nevada's remote terrain. If, in fact, that's where he was still hiding out. To make matters even more challenging, people from the region who knew Claude were openly expressing that they hoped he wouldn't be caught.
They sided with him in the narrative that he'd been defending himself against the law. Now, as wild as that may seem to some of you, I've been doing this long enough to know that oftentimes in remote areas like this where locals feel a strong sense of pride and ownership for the land they believe they have the right to live off of,
anti-regulation sentiments with regards to wildlife restrictions can run deep. So it's not necessarily surprising that folks in this part of the country were rooting for Claude, despite the fact that he stood accused of murdering two men in cold blood.
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Chapter 7: What was the outcome of Claude Dallas's trial?
Investigators strongly suspected he was on foot and managing to stay one step ahead of them while living somewhere in the vast mountainous landscape. They even speculated that he'd hold up in a cave or an abandoned mine shaft.
Bill Pogue's only brother, Ed Pogue, told the Idaho statesman that despite all the efforts to locate his brother's remains being unsuccessful so far, he vowed to never stop searching. And it seemed that law enforcement welcomed Ed's help with open arms. They permitted him to go out on searches and even sit in on meetings about the manhunt.
Ed explained that he was determined to see his brother's killer brought to justice, and he knew that was going to require patience and endurance. He told the newspaper, quote, I'm ready to wait as long as it takes. He's bound to resurface somewhere, and that's what I'll be waiting for." By January 14th, though, law enforcement's determination was not as resolute as Ed's.
Formal ground searches for Claude had scaled back significantly. The task of trying to locate Bill Pogue's remains continued, though, and the sheriff of Owyhee County told UPI that, similar to what Ed Pogue had previously expressed, it was a waiting game when it came to finding their prime suspect. The sheriff said in reference to Claude, My personal opinion is that he is not very far from home.
We just have to figure out what part of his backyard he's in." Around that same time, reporter Ellen Marks briefly got a hold of Claude's father, Claude Dallas Sr., at his home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And dad said that he was really heartbroken to learn about the murders his son was accused of committing.
But he and his wife still planned to stand by their son and were very worried about his safety. When asked, Claude Sr. denied being in contact with his son and stated that the family had spoken with the FBI and local law enforcement in their area about the situation. In that same newspaper article, a little bit more information about Claude Jr. 's origin story and family makeup was revealed.
And it turns out he was one of a handful of siblings, four brothers, two half-sisters, and one sister. They were scattered all over the country, and it's unclear from the source material if they were in close contact with or had any relationship whatsoever with Claude. But I did see some coverage that explained at least one of his brothers would eventually support him. So, yeah, I don't know.
I don't have all the details there, but I don't think it was a situation of no contact, for example. Anyway, by January 17th, 12 days after the murders, authorities decided to officially disband the search for Bill's body. The sheriff told the press that a tremendous amount of resources had been expended by that point and nothing had been found.
The only new information they had to work with were recent findings from Conley Elms' autopsy. The ME confirmed the version of events Jim Stevens had already explained, which was that .357 and .22 caliber firearms had been used in the murders. The larger caliber gun had fired two rounds into Conley's chest, and the smaller caliber one had been used for the headshot.
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Chapter 8: What legacy did the victims leave behind after their deaths?
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According to articles in the Idaho Statesman, a few days before April 18th, 1982, Humboldt and Hawaii County authorities, the Idaho Department of Law Enforcement, and agents from the FBI received information from an anonymous tipster, which led them to check out a trailer about 50 miles south of where Claude's trapping compound had been located at the time of the murders.
The Humboldt County Sheriff told the newspaper that when 18 to 20 members of law enforcement approached that trailer around 5.45 p.m., they hollered out who they were. And right away, a man wearing military-style fatigues, who they knew to be Claude Dallas Jr., jumped through a glass window, got into a pickup truck, and hauled tail across the desert.
Authorities quickly pursued him in their vehicles and via helicopter, and during the chase, Claude shot at officers multiple times and they returned fire. At some point, Claude was shot in his foot and ended up giving up. When he was taken into custody, investigators found a .22 caliber handgun and a rifle with him. They also noticed that the clothing he was wearing was quite dirty.
In addition to arresting Claude, authorities also arrested a 35-year-old man who owned the trailer he'd been staying in and charged that guy with harboring a fugitive.
According to coverage by the Idaho Statesman, the two men had known one another several years before the murders, which I think just goes to show the significance of the point I made earlier, which is that there were some diehard Claude sympathizers in that part of Idaho and Nevada who were willing to aid him, even though they knew he was wanted for two murders.
After being treated at a local hospital for his gunshot wound, Claude was transported to jails in Reno and Sparks, Nevada to await his arraignment in federal court. During his time on the run, he'd used the alias Jack James Chappell and had actually managed to hold a job at a farm equipment manufacturer in January, February, and March of 1981, which was right after the murders happened.
After leaving that job due to an altercation with a coworker, he disappeared. The sheriff of Owyhee County told the Idaho statesman that he suspected Claude had likely spent several months traveling all around the country. But then in the fall of 1981, had made his way back to the Idaho-Nevada border because that's the area that Claude knew best and had the most supporters.
When law enforcement searched the trailer the trapper had been hiding out in, they seized a bunch of ammunition, traps for animals, gun holsters, a shotgun, two rifles, and five handguns, as well as a bunch of other personal items they believed belonged to Claude. There were also 10 other guns in the dwelling, but those were tied to the owner.
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